Solve the Mystery of Zane's Night Seizures

My name is Gayle Wilson Lemons. My nephew, Zane Wilson, is a 50-year-old single father of two children, ages 15 and 16. He is an accomplished artist, craftsman and builder. For the past fifteen years he has specialized in conceiving, designing and building one-of-a-kind living spaces as simple as decks to more complex mini-homes and renovation of historic homes. He loves the creation process from conception to building with his own hands and labor. To see his work, go to his page on Instagram @PigDeerMedia and then #pigdeermedia to see a portfolio of all his current projects. Zane is also an accomplished fly fisherman, snowboarder, and mountain biker.

For most of those years, Zane has been battling nighttime seizures that have begun to severely impact his ability to perform his work and his ability to support his family, and he needs our help. He tells his story as follows:

“It started in 2010 as a fleeting emotional glitch while looking at a computer screen late one night. It felt like an out-of-body experience—very emotional in nature—like I was on stage and everyone in the audience was looking at me because I had done something really wrong, or embarrassing. Throughout 2010 to 2015, I continued to have the experiences occasionally—they occurred maybe once every 6 months in the beginning. Each experience only lasted a couple of seconds and would disappear. They appeared harmless in nature at first and I originally reasoned it was due to my body aging. I rationalized: ‘It doesn’t last long and appears to be harmless. If it’s a quirk of getting older, I'm fine with that.’ This is how I processed the episodes for the first 5 or 6 years of the experience,

I first saw a doctor in my home state of Colorado in 2019 and had an MRI to rule out a brain tumor, then moved on to testing for epilepsy, but the test results came back inconclusive. I took epileptic medications anyway, then doubled them, then tripled them, with no positive effects, and finally was taken off all medications. By August of 2020, I was seeing another neurologist and undergoing more tests, again with inconclusive results.”

Now, in 2022, Zane’s sleep seizures have increased in frequency to many episodes per night and have intensified in severity to the point of unintentional self-harm. Zane has been referred to the Mayo Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. They have proposed a full week of targeted testing to be performed to finally diagnose Zane’s condition with the goal of identifying his illness and detailing a treatment solution.

Our problem now is that this testing is very expensive and Zane’s health insurance will not cover any treatments outside of the state of Colorado … like the work done at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona in this case.

As a family, we need your help; Zane needs your help – financially, and with your words of encouragement, and with your prayers. Zane is a wonderful, talented, kind man. I love him. This is personal for me, and I’m asking for your help.

When you donate, please leave a message of encouragement for Zane. He has battled this illness for so long and has felt defeat so many times along that journey. He needs hope, and he needs the expert medical treatment that I believe we will find at the Phoenix Mayo Hospital.

Thank you for your help.